


Five Times Fjord’s Friends Said the Word, and One Time They Didn’t Have to

by missyay



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Compulsion, Gen, Post-Episode AU: s02e16 A Favor in Kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missyay/pseuds/missyay
Summary: He’s standing over his backpack in Molly and his room at the inn, and it takes Molly saying, “what is that sound?” for him to realize he’s got his file out and is in the process of filing down his tusks.





	Five Times Fjord’s Friends Said the Word, and One Time They Didn’t Have to

**Author's Note:**

> Something about that conversation Fjord had with the others in the cave in episode 16 just struck a chord with me.

1 - The first time it happens is about a week after that curious night in the cave that led to his resolution to try and see what he looks like with his tusks grown out, nowadays. 

He’s standing over his backpack in Molly and his room at the inn, and it takes Molly saying, “what is that  _sound_?” for him to realize he’s got his file out and is in the process of filing down his tusks. Fjord almost drops the file in his haste to get it out of his mouth, feeling strangely guilty. He doesn’t turn to face Molly, even as he hears him get up out of his bed. Molly’s hand lands heavily on Fjord’s shoulder. Despite himself, Fjord jumps ever so slightly.

“Is that your designated tooth file?” Molly asks. His tone holds nothing but a careless sort of curiosity that doesn’t stem from being involved in the slightest.

“I suppose it is”, Fjord says, looking down at it. It’s an ugly, functional thing for an ugly, functional cause. He could get a better one for a fraction of what he has at his disposal.

“But you wanted to stop using it, right?” Molly presses on. 

“Right”, Fjord says. He runs his tongue over the stubs of his tusks. They feel raw, uneven. A job not well done. It’s already hard not to go back to filing right then and there, right where Molly can see him. The urge to sneak out and finish filing them down to dust where nobody can see him is even stronger.

“Then why don’t you throw that out, now?” Molly asks, not unkindly. This time, Fjord turns to look at him. He finds Mollymauk hard to read, especially when he’s looking him in the eyes, red and vast and so different from everything he knows. His tone is the easiest to decipher, so Fjord decides to stick with that: Molly sounds like he is being kind about this because it is the easiest thing for him to do at the moment. 

Fjord looks at his file, then at Molly, who squeezes his shoulder and wanders back to his bed with a shrug. 

He runs his tongue over his teeth again and makes a decision.

He chucks the file into the wastebin in the corner of their room. 

Without looking up, Molly flashes him a thumbs-up from his bed at the metallic sound it produces. “There you go, Fjord. Your past doesn’t own you. You own it.”

Fjord doesn’t feel like he’s quite there yet: He hasn’t quite gotten to the point where he can make the past his own, but maybe he can part with it all the same. He says, “Thanks, Molly”, and Molly gives him a good-sized smile, fangs and all.

 

2- The second time is at breakfast. Beau turns to him sharply and says, “Ow,  _that_ didn’t sound healthy.”

Fjord takes his fork out of his mouth, embarrassed. 

It’s been years since he’s resorted to cutlery, and just now he didn’t even notice. He takes stock of his tusks: A little worse for wear, but raised above the level of his incisors still. It’s higher than he ever allowed them to grow after he initially cut them down, and it’s making him antsy.

There’s a loose chip on one of them. Fjord tries to bite down on it surreptitiously.

“Need any healing?” Beau asks in that tone she gets when she’s sensing emotions coming up in a conversation and she’s looking for someone to delegate her end of it to. She starts looking around for Jester.

“Nope, I’m good”, Fjord says and tucks into his breakfast again.

His tusks keep getting in the way. 

He must make a face, because Beau seems to get over herself and says, “Just focus on how badass you’ll look when they’re all grown out.”

“The kids didn’t seem to think they looked badass”, Fjord mumbles into his bread.

“Well fuck them!” Beau says with feeling. “You know, I keep thinking, it’s so unfair that our childhood keeps coming back to us like this. That it still gets to form us after all these years. We’re grown ups! We should get to decide what we think of ourselves. Molly has the right idea.”

“Please stop me if I start getting the same fashion sense as Molly”, Fjord says, and Beau laughs and high fives him, so that seals it.

“Would be hilarious though”, she says, more to herself.

Fjord gives her a smile with as many teeth as he can muster.

 

3- Nott keeps glancing over at him nervously. It’s only been a few hours since they’ve left Zadash, so he chalks it up to her fear of being caught at first - of the Gentleman sending his minions after them, of one of Lucien’s friends getting suspicious and deciding to follow them. 

But as she steers the cart through a couple of crossings, she seems to be steeling herself for a conversation. Fjord gets through a few minutes of her opening and closing her mouth before he gives up. “What is it?” he asks.

“It’s - you’re doing it again”, she says, pointing at his mouth.

Ah. Fjord looks at his hands, fingernails cracked from chipping away at his tusks.

He sighs.

They have shaped up into something vaguely pointy, and it’s like the rest of his mouth doesn’t know what to do with that anymore. 

He bites down on one before he can stop himself, making Nott wince sympathetically.

“Is it… is it like an itch?” she asks carefully.

Fjord pointedly relaxes his jaw and stares out onto the path unfurling before them.

“…Yeah, it’s an itch alright”, he says after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.

“Oh, I know all about those”, Nott chirps, perking up.

“Do you know how to make them go away?” Fjord asks flatly.

“Well - no. I mean - have you tried drinking?” Nott holds out her flask for him.

The liquor inside has definitely increased in quality since she got the bottomless flask from Pumat Sol. But that doesn’t stop the sores where his tusks keep poking into his gums from burning as the alcohol touches them, and he grimaces, handing back the flask.

“Let’s practice resisting our itches together”, Nott proposes.

“Sure”, Fjord says, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I’m sorry I tried to steal from you that one time.”

“No problem. Just don’t do it again.”

She nods, looking off to the side. Fjord can’t tell if she’s genuine, but he figures it’s as good an answer as he’s going to get.

 

4- Fjord wakes up with a start, sitting before he’s even opened his eyes. 

“Wha - what’s going on?” he asks, catching the hand that’s gently shaking his shoulder and following it until he reaches the rough fabric of Caleb's unmistakable shaggy coat. He blinks. Caleb quickly pulls back his hand, and says in an undertone: “Sorry, you were just - uh, you were grinding your teeth a lot, and it sounded like - it did not sound good, and you told us to tell you when you did that. So I did.”

Fjord separates his teeth with some effort. His jaw feels almost sore from clenching, he’s got a slight headache, and there’s a dull pain emanating from the base of his tusks. He must have been at it for quite a while.

For the first time, he wonders if it’s worth the trouble.

“Thanks, man”, he says, and Caleb nods, already turning away again. 

Fjord lies down again, keeping his jaw relaxed. It’s taking up most of his concentration.

“I know Molly has been telling you to just let your past go”, Caleb says quietly from where he’s keeping watch, still with his back towards Fjord. “But I don’t think it works like that, or at least not for everyone. Maybe you should let yourself talk about it some more. Your childhood is going to influence you no matter what. You might as well figure out how and why.”

Fjord tries not to laugh too loudly.

“That’s rich, coming from you”, he says under his breath and watches as Caleb hunches his shoulders and takes up a stick to poke around in the remnants of their fire.

“I recently - I recently told someone about my childhood and it did. I mean it didn’t feel good but it felt - well I’ve been feeling a bit better since, so.”

“So why don’t we trade childhood memories”, Fjord offers, half serious.

“Okay”, Caleb says. Fjord stares at him. Caleb seems to collect himself, and then goes on, a shade above a whisper. “I was at the Soltryce Academy, when I was a boy. At sixteen, the Archmage Trent Ikithon took me and a bunch of others under his wing. He was a cruel man. He turned us against each other, he - he had that knack, where he would expect absolute loyalty from us, like we owed it to him. I never asked myself if he was loyal to us back.”

Trent Ikithon. Fjord remembers that name, but he doesn’t ask. Not yet. He has a feeling he can get more information this way, even if Caleb is deliberately holding back on the dramatics so his own stories don’t pale too much in comparison.

“Some people are just good at manipulating others”, he says, sympathetic. “I had that one dude, back at home, who would pretend to be nice to me. If I was nice back, he’d turn around and make fun of me. If I insulted or struck him first, he’d tell everyone how much of a monster I was.”

It’s left him sympathizing with the monsters in all his children’s books and wary towards any and all kind strangers.

“I’m sorry”, Caleb says, and there’s more feeling behind it than Fjord expected.

For a while, he sits quietly. Fjord watched his form move the slightest bit with every breath.

“My parents died in a fire when I was seventeen”, he says finally. “I never really got to mourn them.”

“Why not?” Fjord asks.

“I felt guilty. I didn’t think I deserved to get past their deaths in the slightest. Still don’t.” He swallows. “I also still think maybe I can somehow bring them back.”

“Gods”, Fjord says. He sits up. Caleb turns around at the rustling sound, his face unguarded in the dark of the night. His pupils are so wide his eyes seem black. He looks young, and desperate, and like he’s still hiding something.

“You know you can mourn your parents without forgetting about them, right?” Fjord says.

“Maybe I will”, Caleb answers. There’s that crease in his forehead that means he is already working on a plan. He nods at Fjord. “Your turn.”

Fjord sighs. “I spent a lot of my childhood wishing I could just,” he snaps his fingers as quietly as he can, “blink out of existence. Chipping away at my teeth helped with that, I think. I felt less like my presence alone was already too much.”

“You’re never too much”, Caleb says immediately. 

Fjord raises an eyebrow at him, forgetting for a moment that Caleb can’t see his face in the dark. Caleb seems to know what he means, anyway.

“I mean, when you drew your sword at me, that was - that was a lot. But I was out of line, and we still hardly know each other. But I do believe you are a good person, Fjord. More than any of us. And we’re all here for everything you are, not just the polished parts.”

Fjord makes a low humming sound that’s neither agreement nor denial.

“You should try to sleep”, Caleb says softly. “I’ll keep an ear out for your grinding for the rest of my watch.”

“Thank you”, Fjord says, and lies back down. It’s marginally easier to keep his jaws apart now.

 

5 - It happens during combat, something Fjord is not prepared for. He’s concentrating on a spell he wants to aim towards the wolf pack that has decided to attack them for no apparent reason when he hears an awful creaking sound and a dull shock goes through the left side of his jaw and chin. It throws off his aim, his eldritch blast hitting a nearby tree with a sickening crunch, and makes Jester turn towards him, eyes full of concern.

At first, Fjord thinks a spell must have hit him, until Jester calls out, “Oh, no! Your tooth!”

Fjord runs his tongue over his tusk, now big enough to peek out from under his lower lip. There is a rift running through it from bottom to top. His stomach sinks.

He summons his Falchion and splits one of the wolves that just tried to sink its teeth into Nott’s thigh in half, from top to bottom. 

It’s been a while since he last felt like crying, and all of it over a godsdamned tooth.

Mollymauk darts forth and makes quick work of a second wolf, and the rest of them slink back into the forest, Jester yelling obscenities after them in a way that makes Fjord wonder if it wasn’t specifically intended to lift their spirits. Most of what she does is.

He goes back to his horse. Maybe one of the others has a file that he can use. Maybe he can keep the other tusk. Be a half orc in every goddamn way.

It’s not fair that he needs to resolve to keep his tusks every second of every waking and sleeping moment for the decision to stick, and only decide once that he doesn’t want them for them to be gone for - well, for a few months, probably.

Before he can get back in the saddle, a warm hand lands on his arm. He turns around to face Jester. “Do you want me to try to heal it?” she asks, fingers trailing down his arm until she’s all but holding his hand. The tips of her eyebrows point upwards, pity plain in her voice.

“Oh. It’s - ” he tries to think of a way to decline that doesn’t sound fake. “You save your spells. We could be attacked again this night.”

“Yeah, but you need your teeth.” She reaches out and touches his chin, and he can already feel her magic reaching out for him, warm and tingling. “It’s not a big spell, come on. They were just getting to look so handsome.”

He smiles at her despite himself. “Thank you”, he says. “Alright.”

The rift in his tooth closes up slowly, until all he can feel is the smooth surface and the pointed tip of his left tusk, as good as new. Jester touches it with the tip of her finger for good measure. “Oooh, it makes you look so goood”, she says gleefully in that low voice she gets sometimes that’s just a little growling. “Not that you didn’t look good before! But this is more of you, and more of you is always better!”

Fjord clears his throat. “Thank you, Jester. I’m glad you like them”, he says and goes back to mounting his horse.

He resolves to buy her the biggest pastry he can find in the next town big enough to produce them.

 

+1- He and Yasha are on first watch, and their conversation has mostly died down. 

They’re sitting in comfortable silence, a bit closer together than they did before, brought on by the growing friendships within the group and the approaching winter.

Fjord keeps catching himself running his fingers over his tusks, which are at what he assumes will probably be their full size. 

Yasha reaches out and touches his hand with a meaningful glance, and Fjord lets his own hand sink. Well, this is new.

“I think we all like them”, she says, awkwardly. “Your teeth. I mean, not that it’s our business, but. In case you cared.”

“I wasn’t picking at them”, Fjord says. He’s glad for the low light. “I was, uh. Checking them out. I like them too.”

“Oh.” Yasha averts her gaze, then looks back over at him. There’s a smile slowly spreading on her face; it looks unfamiliar and out of place, but it’s a smile. 

“Good.”

Fjord smiles back, lower lip stretching over his tusks, and wonders what it must look like. A little grim, probably. He doesn’t mind.


End file.
